In her inaugural address, Penn President Amy Gutmann proclaimed, "The third principle of the Penn Compact is to engage locally and globally. ... Through our collaborative engagement with communities all over the world, Penn is poised to advance the central values of democracy: life, liberty, opportunity and mutual respect." President Gutmann has also spoken highly of Engineering freshman George Sworo -- a Sudanese refugee who spent most of his life in Uganda -- at both convocation and her inaugural.
It is past time that Penn put word into deed and supported the victims of the Darfur genocide, much as it has done for victims of the recent tsunami. But even this would still be playing catch-up to its students.
Sworo is part of Penn STAND (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur). "We're trying to make people more aware and trying to raise money in order to help the refugee camps," he explains. Penn STAND has collected funds for nonprofits like Doctors Without Borders and the International Crisis Group. The group has also encouraged students to sign petitions opposing the ongoing Darfur genocide. Says Penn STAND founder Anna Mayergoyz, "We've collected 1,200 signatures on campus."
In April, Penn STAND will be holding a candlelight vigil on the anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. It will also be sponsoring "STAND-Fast," a "luxury fast" encouraging students to give up items like cigarettes and coffee for a day and donate the savings. "A cafe latte is probably $2.40," says Mayergoyz. "It is 40 cents a meal there for one person, so giving up one cafe latte feeds six people."
And Penn STAND is not alone. It is part of a network of student organizations, 120 chapters strong, engaging in multiple forms of activism. Swarthmore students started the Genocide Intervention Fund to raise money for the African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, with a goal of raising $100,000 to remember the 100 days of the Rwandan genocide.
Some students are petitioning their universities to divest from companies doing business with the Sudanese government. As Manav Bhatnagar, the co-creator of Harvard's Sudan Divestment petition, explains, the Darfur genocide is highly mechanized. While the genocide in Rwanda was carried out largely with machetes, the victims in Darfur face helicopters and Russian MiG fighter aircraft. Questioned Bhatnagar, "How can a country with a $22 billion foreign debt afford MiGs?"
The answer is foreign investments. While the U.S. has long had sanctions on Sudan, foreign companies are willing to do business with the country. Chinese companies PetroChina and Sinopec and Russian firm Tatneft have inked contracts with Sudan to extract its oil wealth. According to Bhatnagar, PetroChina has two $500 million contracts with the Khartoum government, a military dictatorship that came to power in a 1989 coup.
Several European companies have also contracted with Khartoum to build infrastructure in the Arab north of the country, according to Bhatnagar. Siemens AG signed a $180 million contract to build communications infrastructure, the ABB Group is building a power plant, and Alcatel is building an undersea fiberoptic cable. By building infrastructure for the Khartoum government, these companies are providing material support and international legitimacy for a genocidal regime.
Penn STAND has also considered a divestment campaign. However, Penn has been unwilling even to say what it owns. Unlike other schools -- Harvard, for example -- Penn does not file a form listing its equity holdings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In an e-mail interview, Penn's chief investment officer Kristin Gilbertson stated, "Penn does not, as a policy, disclose portfolio holdings."
According to Gilbertson, "Penn's primary objective in investing the endowment is to earn a superior rate of return as required to grow endowment support for a variety of University programs." And fairly, Penn should not be required to invest only in socially responsible companies; to the extent that these assets subsidize education, they are providing a moral good.
But supporting genocide is another situation entirely. "It's like investing in Zyklon-B, the gas [the Nazis] used to kill all of the Jews in gas chambers," says Mayergoyz, who first became involved in Darfur activism through a Holocaust education project. Intuitional investors like Penn have a clear moral responsibility to divest from companies supporting the infrastructure of the Darfur genocide. But Penn STAND should not have to convince the administration of a broader duty; as noted above, it is already part of the Penn Compact.
According to Sworo, 180,000 people have already died in this genocide, with more dying daily. It is time for the University to measure up to its moral responsibility and its own stated principles; it is time to divest any and all University assets from Sudan and instead direct resources to aiding victims of the Darfur genocide.
Kevin Collins is a junior Political Science major from Milwaukee. ...And Justice For All appears on Tuesdays.
